


Out of the Cold

by scullywolf



Series: Growing a Home [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Pete's World
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 15:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4630050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About six months after the events of Journey's End, the Doctor and Rose were working for Torchwood while they waited for their TARDIS to grow. It was supposed to be just a routine salvage operation, but then everything went all pear-shaped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yinyangren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yinyangren/gifts).



> Written for the DW Secret Santa exchange on Tumblr. Rated for language. Prompt: "Something happy! Or angst-turn-happy. Just... happy ending? :D And something with snow/cold!"

Any other time, she would have been going on the mission with him. They weren't often called out into the field — his work for Torchwood mostly kept him in the lab, and she had settled into a more supervisory role in Mission Control, after the Dimension Cannon project was shut down — and they preferred to do their traveling and adventuring off the clock and free from Torchwood oversight, anyway. But on the rare occasion that they were called out, they always went together. Trouble was, two days earlier she had tripped going down the stairs at the office. Stupidest thing, turning her head to laugh at something he'd said as they were on their way to lunch, losing track of her footing, but she'd rolled her ankle so badly that it had to be splinted. It would be at least a week before she'd be fit for anything but desk work. And he would have stayed behind with her, except that there was a chance they would really need his help translating, if indeed the crashed craft turned out to have survivors. 

The clock was ticking, and there was no time to agonize over what ifs or wait for her ankle to heal; besides, Jake and Mark would be going with him, and they were arguably the best field agents Torchwood had (with Mickey gone). Jake Simmonds had been with the organization since Pete took it over, going on seven years now, and he was both efficient and thorough when it came to field operations. Mark Collins was ex-military, skilled zeppelin and helicopter pilot, hired by Torchwood about six months before Rose. He was arguably the best marksman they had, and he was extraordinarily level headed in high-stress situations. If the Doctor had to be going into the field without her, Rose was glad he was going with those two. So she swallowed her trepidation and kissed him as she handed him his rucksack.

“Be careful out there,” she said, and he gave her his trademark grin.

“Course I will. Be back before you can even miss me!” 

* * *

It was supposed to be a quick float up to northern Scotland, where a ship of some sort had reportedly crashed into a snowy mountain. They should have been able to check out the crash site, look for survivors, salvage any potentially useful technology, and be home by the next day at the absolute latest. What they hadn't counted on was finding not only survivors but hostile ones. The Doctor, Jake and Mark had laser rifles pointed at them almost from the moment they stepped inside the wrecked spacecraft.

The Doctor kicked himself for not immediately recognizing the origin of the ship half-buried in the snow bank. To be fair, it was slightly different from any model of Taurali scout craft he'd encountered in the Prime Universe, but he still should have caught on faster. The Taurali were pirates, more or less, and they made a habit of invading other planets for fun and profit. They were maddeningly good at it (or, at least, good at picking targets they would be able to defeat easily). On at least two occasions, the Time Lords had resorted to ignoring their own policy of non-interference in order to prevent the marauding brutes from gaining control of some particularly advanced and dangerous technology. Tired of having their efforts thwarted, the Taurali joined forces with the Daleks when the Time War was in its infancy; they sought to ride the Daleks' proverbial coat tails to victory, hoping to be free to plunder and occupy with impunity once the Time Lords were out of the way. Of course, they managed to piss off Davros almost straight away, and that had been the end of them.

No Time War in this universe. No Time Lords, either. No telling how far the Taurali could have spread. Obviously they'd made it at least as far as Earth, even if they were just reconnoitering and happened to crash accidentally.

Tall, bipedal, with orange skin and bright green eyes, the Taurali looked sort of like stretched Oompa Loompas. Well, except that they had four bright green eyes, all in a row, which gave them an impressively wide field of vision. High ranking males and females both grew bushy black beards as an indicator of status. That the two the Torchwood team found in the craft, both males, were clean-shaven meant there was a pretty good chance they were low ranking scouts rather than seasoned invaders. Still, the Doctor groaned inwardly when he saw them; he groaned outwardly when they saw him and raised their weapons.

“Bit of trouble, then?” he asked quickly. His use of their language gave them pause, allowing him to murmer over his shoulder at Jake and Mark. “No guns, hands up, do not provoke these fellows.”

“How is it that you speak Tauralish?” the nearer one demanded, his outer set of eyes narrowed in suspicion while the inner two were widened in surprise. 

“Oh, you know, nothing too extraordinary, just a bit of a linguaphile really. Never thought I'd have cause to speak this one again, though. Honestly, I did not see this coming.”

“This one is not human,” the second Tauralim said. “No inhabitants of this galaxy, let alone this planet, should even be aware of our existence, and yet this one speaks our language! How? We were told this planet contained humans only.”

“Weeeeeeeell, you're half right. I'm part human. Part non-human. Born in a parallel universe, none of my kind in existence here. Or, well, anywhere really. I'm a complicated event in time and space.”

“Doctor, what's going on?” Jake asked. “Why're they pointing guns at us?”

“Spot of bad luck we've got, Jakey Boy,” he replied, keeping a smile on his face. “But let me handle this and we just might all make it safely home.”

“You will speak Tauralish only unless otherwise instructed!” shouted the first Tauralim, whom the Doctor decided to think of as Blue, for the purposes of differentiation, on account of his bright blue tunic. The other alien wore a brown one, so he was Not-Blue. Obviously.

“Right. Yes. Sorry. Won't happen again. Now how about we put these weapons down and you can tell me what it is you want. Because it seems to me that you gentlemen are a bit stuck. I can see from here that your comms are shot, and even if you did manage to send out a distress call before you crashed, you're almost certainly presumed dead. Help is not coming. Well, it wouldn't be coming anyway, would it? Not especially big on rescue missions, you lot.”

The aliens lowered their weapons, warily. Blue spoke again.

“You will arrange for a replacement craft to be brought here. We will return to the battle fleet and report that the Earth contains sufficient resources to justify invasion, even if this pathetic rock is located so far afield of any other inhabited planet.”

“Ah. Well. Slight spanner in the works, there. See, that might have been an option if you'd landed, oh, four or five hundred years from now. But at present, humans have barely managed to make it to their own moon. Interstellar travel is still science fiction, as far as they're concerned. There's not a ship on this whole planet that could get you where you need to go. Now me, I'm a bit of a decent mechanic. If you'll agree to let my associates go, I can see about getting your craft space-worthy again.”

The Taurali considered this. 

“Look, you probably figured this out already, but you crashed a good fifty, sixty miles from the nearest village, and even there you're not going to find much more than a handful of inhabitants. That's an awfully long walk through the snow for a species not especially well equipped to deal with cold weather. I mean, just look at what you're wearing. You won't make it half a mile before your arms and legs are completely numb. So yeah, you could kill us and try your luck out there on your own, but you're not going to get far, and even if you did, you're not going to get off this planet. But you already know all of this or you wouldn't still be here, and neither would we. Your very best option is to take my offer. So let my colleagues go, and I will do what I can to help you.”

Not-Blue spoke up. “Why would you help us? Why should we trust you not to sabotage our ship?”

“Well, because in exchange for helping you get off this planet alive, you're going to report back that the Earth is not worth invading. You are going to leave this planet and its people alone.”

The Taurali burst out laughing. “You presume to dictate to us? You defenseless infant species with your wealth of resources just ripe for the taking? Ridiculous!”

“Well, have it your way. Kill us and die of exposure and starvation out here. Honestly given the option, I'd take the quick death, myself. But I'm not helping you unless you let these men go and then give me your word you'll leave the Earth alone.”

He turned to walk away, which was incredibly risky. The aliens would not hesitate to shoot him in the back in they were so inclined. He was taking a huge gamble, banking on the fact that these Taurali did not appear to be especially intelligent, as well as the fact that no one wants to be stranded on an alien planet with no chance of rescue and little chance of survival. Fortunately, it paid off.

“Wait.”

The Doctor stopped, his back still to the aliens. He tried to give Jake and Mark a reassuring smile before turning back around. The Taurali were whispering to each other.

“What'll it be, boys? Do we have a deal?”

Just then the Doctor's mobile chirped in his breast pocket. Shit. The Taurali immediately raised their weapons again, and the Doctor raised his hands.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Relax. It's just my...communications device. We haven't checked in since we landed, so that's headquarters asking for a status update.”

“Remove the device and set it on the floor! Now!” barked Not-Blue.

Slowly, deliberately, the Doctor unzipped this parka and reached into his suit jacket to retrieve the phone. He pulled it out with two fingers, other hand raised all the while in surrender. The Taurali stared, unblinking, their weapons trained on him as he slowly bent over to set the phone on the ground in front of them. Before he'd even stood straight once more, the mobile was unceremoniously crushed under Blue's boot. He groaned, unable to keep from whinging.

“Oh come on now! That was completely uncalled for!”

“Silence, or I will crush you just as easily!” growled the Tauralim.

The Doctor mimed zipping his lips.

“Your associates may depart. You will remain here and fix our ship. If you attempt to double cross us, we will kill you without hesitation.”

“Works for me. May I speak with them now, let them know they can leave?”

“Do it quickly.”

“Well, I mean, I'll be as quick as I can. We're not supposed to leave people behind, so it'll be a bit of work convincing them to break protocol like that.”

“Just get on with it!” barked Not-Blue.

The Doctor turned to face his team. “Right, we need to make this quick. These bastards are not nice and they do not mess around. I've bought us some time by saying I will help fix their ship, but it's quite possibly beyond repair. My cooperation has assured your release, however, so you two can fly back to Torchwood. Let Pete and Rose know what is going on. We have two Taurali scouts here. On their own, they can't wreak too much havoc, but if they get back to the battle fleet...well, I'm still working on that.”

“We're not leaving you,” Jake interrupted.

“You've got to,” the Doctor insisted. “I'm counting on you to get back to London and warn them. I never thought to write down anything about the Taurali because they'd long since been wiped out in my universe. And I don't know how strong their forces are here, but if I had to guess, the answer would be 'very.' Press any alien contacts you have, gather as much intel as you can on their probable location and numbers. Their home planet is called Mabrax'in, but they tend to spread out and may have amassed quite an empire by now. They also send out mobile battle fleets, which could be anywhere. If they decide to attack the Earth, it could be very, very bad. They are mean, they are not interested in trading or treaties, they are out for invasion and domination. Now, I will try to get more information out of these two while I work on their ship, but I'll have no way of contacting you til I get their comms operational again, and even that will be risky.”

“I don't like it,” Mark said, “but I think you're probably right that this is the best option.”

“Of course I'm right...”

“Enough talking!” interrupted the Tauralim. “The others will leave now and you will begin repair work.”

“Right, yes, good. Sending them away now.” He turned to Jake and lowered his voice. “Jake, tell Rose I'm sorry, and to find the blue envelope in my desk drawer at home. And that I'm doing everything I can to get back to her.”

Jake nodded. “You've got it, mate. I'll hold you to that.”

Ten minutes later, the Torchwood zeppelin was lifting off and heading back to headquarters. The Doctor watched it go, determined to figure a way out of the mess he was in.

* * *

Rose did not take it well when the zeppelin returned without the Doctor aboard. She laid into Mark and Jake for leaving him behind, though she did later apologize. She knew better than anyone what he was like, how he would put himself in harm's way to keep those around him safe, and she knew the risks involved in the life they'd made for themselves. But it didn't mean she had to like it. Or that she would keep from blaming herself for not being there on the mission with them.

After the initial shock and upset, she threw herself into finding out all she could about the aliens holding her own part-alien captive. There wasn't a lot of information out there, but everything she did find just made her more and more uneasy. The Doctor had said the Taurali did not mess around, and he appeared to be quite correct. They were out for profit (overthrow a planet and steal its resources) but also just because they simply enjoyed fighting, it seemed. They had been slowly but steadily taking over planets in the galaxy M87, but that was so far away that neither Torchwood nor UNIT had even bothered running a full threat assessment, believing the Earth to be well out of range of potential danger. Evidently they were not so far out of range after all.

The worst bit was that they did not appear to be the honor-bound sort of pirates. The Taurali were not the sort to stick to their word, and as a result they were not to be trusted. Rose worried that for all the Doctor's efforts to keep the rest of his team safe and buy Torchwood some time, the bloody orange bastards would kill him anyway as soon as he'd finished fixing their ship. If he even could. Mark had said it was in pretty bad shape, that it was a miracle anyone had even survived the crash. Stuck up there in the snow with minimal tools and no replacement parts? He was good, she knew, but he was also accustomed to having access to parts and scrap and at least moderately comfortable working conditions. He had his sonic, at least. She shuddered to think what sort of position he would be in without that.

Right. They needed two things. They needed a defense plan for if and when the Taurali battle fleet decided to attack. She set her team to get started on that task while she began work on item number two: a rescue mission. Because as much as she trusted the Doctor to get himself out of yet another scrape, she was not content to sit idly by and count on the stranded Taurali to return him unharmed. 

Unfortunately, the location of the crash site and the current snow levels were going to make a rescue tricky. They couldn't very well just fly the zeppelin back up there and perform a standard extraction. The shooting would begin before they even had a chance to touch down. No, they would have to land some distance away and trek in and out on foot. Most likely under cover of night. It would take some time to arrange. She sighed, fetched another cup of tea, and set to work.

* * *

By the time Rose got back to the flat that night, it was nearly two in the morning, and she was exhausted. She would have just slept at the office except that she wanted to find the envelope in the Doctor's desk. It wasn't hard to locate. Inside were a note and a flash drive.

 

Rose,

I hope you never have to read this, but I won't make the mistake of being too cocky to leave it at all. Consider it Emergency Programme Two: Paper Version. Just until we get our girl up and running, and then I can leave you something a bit better.

Right. So. If you're reading this, then I'm gone. Hopefully just temporarily, in which case, don't you give up on me. I will always fight to get back to you. Always.

If it is instead the case that I'm, you know, very obviously not coming back, I am so, so sorry. You need to know that I cherished every moment of our lives together, yeah? Again and again, Rose, you have made me better. And you and me? I wouldn't have missed it for the universe.

But let's assume I'm just stuck somewhere, delayed by my own stupidity, probably sticking my foot in my mouth and pissing someone off in the process. Erm, yes, also sorry about that. But! I'll sort it out. You know I always do. And because I don't want you to have to hear it from anyone else...

...I love you, Rose Tyler. Never forget it or doubt it.

Oh, and the flash drive enclosed with this note contains backups of all of my notes regarding the TARDIS growth, in case you need to see to any new developments while I'm away. I try to remember to update it weekly, so hopefully everything on there should be fairly current.

See you again soon.  
Your Doctor

 

Rose read the note, written in the Doctor's scrawling hand, three or four times over. She could hear his voice in her head as she read it, and it made her smile even as she missed him and worried about him. They'd been in worse scrapes before, she thought. How many times had one or the other of them played rescuer? She would get him back.

She tucked the note and flash drive back into the envelope, which she returned to the desk drawer. Not even bothering to change out of her clothes, she collapsed onto the bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

* * *

The Taurali ship was not in quite as bad a shape as it had at first appeared. The hull's defense shield had been activated when they had started to crash, and as a result, there was surprisingly little damage to the outside of the craft. However, the force of the impact had reverberated throughout the inside of the ship, wreaking all sorts of havoc. Most of the electronics were badly damaged, and fixing them would be a tricky endeavor, but not a hopeless one. Quite likely doable, if time-consuming. Outside, the defense shield had not managed to protect the left engine, which was completely crushed; it would be long and tedious work to painstakingly un-crunch each component, even with the advanced metalwork setting on the sonic, but it could be done. Hopefully. 

The primary concern was going to be the cold. His thermoregulatory abilities as a part-human were terribly inferior to those he'd possessed as a full Time Lord. The ship's environmental systems were shot, no great surprise, and though the Torchwood team had dressed for snow, they hadn't planned on having to stay the night anywhere other than inside the comfortably heated zeppelin. A ten-hour salvage mission and a week-long repair job required vastly different equipment and provisions. Which brought him around to the secondary concern: food. The Doctor made a habit of always keeping some extra snacks in his transdimensional pockets, but he wasn't sure how far he would be able to stretch what he had. He rather doubted his captors would be willing to share their limited rations with him, whatever they may be. He couldn't recall just then if the Taurali diet was even compatible with a human digestive system, anyway.

He was caught, then, between wanting to give Rose and the rest of Torchwood as much time as possible to formulate a defense plan against a potential Taurali invasion and needing to get the job done before he became overly compromised by the lack of warmth and food. Regardless, the first order of business was to get the ship's electrical systems working again. With power and the one mostly-undamaged engine on the right side of the ship, he should be able to get the air handler functioning. With that would come heating capability, which he was sorely going to need before too much longer. He pulled out his sonic (with reassurances to his captors that it was not a weapon but a tool and in fact a rather vital one) and set to work.

He had always found TARDIS repair a sort of soothing activity. Focus on the problem, figure out what needed to be done, tinker until he'd fixed it. Even under less than ideal circumstances, dealing with emergency repairs, there was something comforting about methodically working on a thing with his hands. Since landing in Pete's World, working in his lab at Torchwood had sort of taken over that role. He had also developed a fondness for painstakingly working all of the knots out of Rose's shoulders as they sat together on the sofa at the end of a long day. 

The Doctor sighed, letting his thoughts drift to Rose while his fingers teased apart a nest of wires. He was grateful she hadn't been put in harm's way, but he hated being apart from her. He reflected that it was, in fact, the first time they had been separated since they'd come home from Norway, nearly six months earlier. He trusted, though, that she was busily and determinedly making the most of whatever time he was able to give her, doing her part to help keep the Earth safe from harm. She was brilliant at her job, and even if Torchwood's stance on guns did not exactly jibe with the Doctor's own, he knew that Rose only used them as a last resort. It was one thing to go up against a Dalek, where the chances of survival in the absence of major firepower were slim at best. It was quite another to shoot first and ask questions later when encountering a scared, stranded alien who just happened to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite all of the terrible things she had seen and experienced, Rose had retained the empathy and compassion he so adored in her. Compassion does not automatically mean naivete, however, and Rose's ability to recognize quickly whether or not an actual threat existed and act accordingly made her an invaluable asset to Torchwood, not least in the area of interplanetary relations.

The Doctor paused to blow warm air into his cupped hands, then flexed his fingers a few times to keep the blood flowing. Not five minutes in and he was already feeling the effects of the cold. This did not bode well. He shook his head and carried on, though, determined to get out of danger and back home to Rose.


	2. Chapter 2

“Right, so we'll come from the north and set down on the back side of the mountain, here.”

Rose was leading the rescue mission briefing the next morning, standing in front of a map projected on the conference room screen. She was focused and energized, despite having caught only a scant few hours of sleep the night before. 

“From there, we will hike as far as we can toward the crash site without being at risk of detection, at which point we will set up a base of operations and wait for nightfall. Once we have sufficient cover, we'll move close enough to surveil and assess the site. If we can ascertain that the Doctor is alive and unharmed, we will try to find the opportunity to make contact. You'd think the Taurali have got to sleep sometimes, but as I've learned, the sleep requirements of different species varies hugely. So we will make contact with the Doctor only if it is safe to do so. If the Taurali catch wind of us, he and the rest of us are all as good as dead.”

She surveyed the serious faces around the room. Jake, Mark, Pete, Tosh, and a handful of other elite operatives were assembled. Everyone present was well aware of the stakes.

“Best case scenario, we'll be able to extract him and take out the Taurali. I'm not a big fan of killing without real cause, but if it's us or them, well...” She didn't have to finish that sentence. “But I don't want to just go in there guns blazing. We don't know what sort of diplomatic progress the Doctor might have been able to make in the meantime. Believe me, I've seen him talk his way out of more hopeless-looking scenarios than I can count. The Taurali may not be known for taking a reasonable approach, but if anyone can change their minds, it's the Doctor.”

There was still one hiccup with the mission, and that was Rose's sprained ankle. She was sorely tempted to lie and say she was fit for action, but the truth was going to become immediately apparent the moment she stepped onto an uneven surface. Say, for example, a snowy mountain slope. And she wasn't willing to put the lives of her team members at risk if she was not up to carrying her own weight (literally) or running full-out, if necessary. But she wasn't willing to stay behind in London, either, so she would stay with the zeppelin. If the operation ended up taking more than a few days, she should be able to hike out and join the team at their base. It was hardly ideal, but it was the best option she had.

“Right. Any questions?”

* * *

It was bloody cold. Bloody fucking cold. He couldn't work on wiring with his bloody gloves on, and without them his hands got too numb to be useful after more than a few minutes. Bloody inefficient human circulatory system. He had worked through the night, unwilling to risk dropping his guard and falling asleep in front of his captors. (Truth be told, he was also more than a little afraid of freezing to death if he happened to fall asleep.) He was grumpy and stiff and tired, but he was making slow progress on the electrical system, and he would take slow progress over no progress. While he worked, he listened to the Taurali argue with each other. He'd sussed out their names in the process. Blue was actually called Braxli, and he was a fair bit older than Not-Blue Shebli, who was only on his first scouting mission, poor sod. The rookie scout had apparently made some sort of navigation error that had led to their crash, a fact that Braxli was quick to remind him of. Repeatedly. 

This made Shebli dangerous because he had something to prove. The cold and the cramped quarters and the near-constant abuse were starting to get to him, and the Doctor did not want to be the target when he finally snapped. In an ideal world, the two Taurali would come to blows and somehow manage to do each other in. Not that he felt violence was the best answer, of course, but if the pugilistic aliens wanted to set him free by killing each other, well, he supposed that was their prerogative. 

Failing that, it seemed that Braxli was perhaps the Doctor's best bet for an eventual ally. For all his bluster and additional years of experience, he was so angry about being stranded that he might be grateful enough to honor his word and leave the Earth alone if the ship were actually fixed. Okay, it was a very slight chance, but the Doctor knew better than to discount the very slight chances out of hand; he'd had far too many narrow scrapes and near misses and impossible saves over the years to entirely lose hope in the face of incredibly unfavorable odds.

He paused for the 238th time to chafe his numb hands, blowing on them to warm them up ever so slightly. Just one...more...wire...there! He twisted the last two strands into place and the lights flickered on. The Taurali stopped arguing momentarily and looked over toward him.

“Let there be light, gentlemen,” the Doctor muttered. Not that they would get the reference, but that hardly mattered.

* * *

Torchwood had three private zeppelins. The first was visually almost indistinguishable from a standard commercial floater, but it had been extensively modified to carry heavy equipment and also possessed major defensive shielding. Despite not being weaponized, it was the closest thing they had to a battlecraft. The second was designed for super-long-range journeys. It was large but also very fast, capable of reaching speeds nearly equal to that of a fast helicopter, and could stay aloft for days at a time. The third was the one Rose and her team boarded that morning. It was small, much smaller than the typical airship, and designed with speed and stealth in mind. It was equipped with experimental cloaking technology, similar to a perception filter, which made it ideally suited to covert operations and rescue missions and the like. 

Twenty-four hours had passed since Jake, Mark and the Doctor had set off in zeppelin number one on what was supposed to be a salvage mission. Rose was full of anxiety over how the Doctor had fared in the freezing conditions overnight. She'd never had to worry about that before he became part-human; he'd been perfectly comfortable sauntering around on Woman Wept in his jumper and leather jacket or on some desert planet in his suit and trenchcoat. “Superior Time Lord physiology,” he'd always told her with a bit of a smirk. Well, even there were a lot of reasons to appreciate his new “inferior human physiology,” this was not one of them. She just hoped he had managed to find a way to keep himself warm enough out there on the mountain.

She sat staring out the window, worrying a thumbnail with her teeth. Pete sat beside her. It was unusual for him to come out into the field, but he wanted to personally oversee the rescue op, for Rose's sake. Even though he had built his career as a businessman, dealing with the aftermath of the Cyberman invasion had been a trial by fire. The subsequent rebuilding of Torchwood from the ground up had been a rapid and thorough education into the ways of both offensive and defensive operations. His experience made him a good choice to lead the op, even if technically he was too close to Rose and the Doctor to be objective. Then again, when it came to rescuing one of your own, objectivity was never really going to be an option. He laid a hand on Rose's knee.

“He'll be all right,” he said.

Rose turned to him and nodded. “Hope so.”

“Mark said the Taurali craft was quite large and only minimally damaged on the outside. The bulk of the repair work needed was on the interior equipment and systems. If he was inside the ship and out of the wind overnight, with his parka, that should be enough to ward off hypothermia. Honestly, he'll be all right.”

Rose rubbed at her eyes. Pete had a good point. It wouldn't have been a comfortable night for the Doctor by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn't completely at the mercy of the elements. 

“Yeah, 'spose you're right. Thanks. Let's just not cock up getting him out of there.”

“You know we will take every precaution.“

She put her hand on top of his. “I know. I just wish...”

She wished a lot of things. Wished things were simpler, wished the aliens they'd found had been the friendly sort, even wished he still had the ability to regenerate, selfish a wish as that might be. But she'd only just got him back. She didn't think she could cope with losing him for good.

Mark's voice came over the speakers from the flight deck.

“We're about ten minutes out. Start gathering gear.”

Pete squeezed Rose's knee once more and stood to retrieve his pack and snow gear. Rose gave him a weak smile and opened the mission brief folder on her lap.

“Right, let's go through checklists, everyone...”

* * *

Rose hadn't really considered just how barmy she would go, sitting alone in the zeppelin. Not only was the Doctor out there in danger, but now her colleagues and Pete were out there in the snow as well. Unable to pace, she fidgeted. And fidgeted. And fidgeted some more.

She was connected to the rest of the team via headset. Unfortunately, they had a long ride ahead of them and wouldn't exactly be providing blow-by-blow updates of every snow drift they encountered. They had decided, in the end, to take snowmobiles. They had gone back and forth about the convenience versus the noisiness, an argument that had begun in the conference room and continued throughout much of the float to the mountain. But they ultimately decided that they needed to have a means of rapid retreat, if it came to that. They were going to have to set up camp several miles from the crash site, and the camp would itself be several miles from the zeppelin. They would only take the snowmobiles as far as the camp and then hike the rest of the way, so the Taurali shouldn't be able to hear them from that far off. Rose had been one of the people most concerned about tipping off the hostile aliens and putting the Doctor in further danger, but she was eventually swayed by the thought of an exhausted Doctor having to run ten or more miles in the snow in order to get back to the zeppelin. Pete assured her they would only take the snowmobiles as far as it was safe to do so while avoiding detection. 

So Rose had finally agreed, and the five others had set off. Now there was nothing to do but wait until they reached a place to set up camp. She thought about hailing Tosh on the comm, back at headquarters, but she didn't want to distract Tosh from her work. Toshiko Sato was the team's navigation and computer engineering expert. She was busily working on software to support the tracking devices that the team had brought with them. If possible, they wanted to install one or more on the Taurali ship. That way, they could trace the aliens back to their battle fleet and, with any luck, be able to have some sort of heads up in the event of an attempted Taurali invasion of Earth. To get the trackers working across deep space was no easy feat, but Tosh had been the one to develop a way to track Rose across dimensions. It should be a relatively simple matter of tweaking her existing software, but it would still take some time and was far more important than Rose needing an outlet for her nervous energy.

She rubbed at her face. He would be okay. She trusted that he could look after himself. All the same, she would feel better once they had visual confirmation that he was all right.

Jake's voice crackled in her ear. “Rose?”

She jumped. “Go ahead, Jake.”

“We're setting down about three miles from where we landed. Should only be another five or six around and up the mountain to the crash site. I'm texting you our exact coordinates now. We should have nightfall in about another two hours and will set out again then.”

“Copy that, Jake. Good work. Stay warm out there.”

Jake chuckled. “Yeah, doing our best.”

They'd deliberately landed a bit lower in elevation on the mountain than where the Taurali ship lay, in order to have a faster potential getaway, booking it downhill if necessary. This meant it would be an uphill slog in the dark, wearing full snow gear and hauling scopes and other equipment along with them, in order to get to a point from which they could surveil the crash site, but that difficulty was worth the ability to make a rapid retreat. Well. As rapid a retreat as one could make running miles in the snow. But they planned to split, with three hiking on ahead and two remaining at the camp with the snowmobiles. 

Pete, Jake and Mark would be the ones heading up to the site. That left Ollie Weaver and Miranda Shepard from Torchwood's Med Division to provide backup and any emergency medical support that might be needed. (It was standard protocol to bring at least one field medic along on any rescue or extraction op.) If it came to running, they would ride up the mountain and meet the others on the way down. It would be a tight squeeze, three to a snowmobile, but it would be better and faster than fleeing on foot from a couple of hostile aliens bent on killing them.

The team set up snow tents and loaded the surveillance equipment into packs in preparation for the hike. They also grabbed three of Tosh's trackers and some survival rations, along with chemical hand warmers and an extra in-ear comm for the Doctor. If they were unable to extract him right away, at least he would have food and the ability to communicate with the rest of the team. As the sun began to set behind the mountain, Jake, Mark and Pete set off again, while Ollie and Miranda hunkered down to wait.

* * *

“Tell me, Braxli, what do the Taurali want with the Earth, anyway?” the Doctor casually asked as he used his sonic to repair some of the cracked glass covering the cockpit gauges. 

The aliens were sleeping in shifts so their captive was not left unguarded; Braxli and the Doctor were in the cockpit alone while Shebli slept in the rear of the ship. The Doctor, meanwhile, was running on close to 36 hours with no sleep, so he was starting to get a bit punchy. And repairing cracked glass, while necessary to be able to read (and properly diagnose problems with) the gauges, was tedious work. Striking up a conversation with Braxli would help keep him awake, even if his judgment and tact were maybe not operating at full capacity at the moment.

“I mean, I understand about expansion of an empire and all of that, but the Milky Way is an awfully long way from M87. Even assuming you lot have figured out rapid interstellar travel — which you must have, because I don't get the sense you've spent the past few millennia on this scouting mission — that still requires massive amounts of energy. And for what? What's so valuable that it would be worth traveling all the way out here to harvest or whatever?”

“Earth contains an abundance of nonsentient life forms composed of a fibrous lignin and cellulose matrix. Such beings are rare in our galactic sector, and so the compensation would be significant.”

The Doctor cocked his head to one side. “Trees? You'd launch an invasion over trees? Really?”

Braxli huffed. “Perhaps they are so commonplace to you that you fail to appreciate their value.”

“No, no no no, not at all. Trees are brilliant! Love the trees. It's just...wouldn't it be easier to grow your own? Sure, it might require a bit of preparation, sorting out a growing space. But surely you can find some nice uninhabited planet — not one you made uninhabited, mind — set it up with the optimal conditions for growth, voila! All the trees you could want, without the hassle of galaxy-hopping or the nasty business of making enemies of the humans.”

Braxli's four eyes blinked at him. “You think we have not tried this approach? There is a reason for the inflated value of this resource. The life forms you call 'trees' do not survive in a methane-based environment. The vast majority of planets in our sector are methane- rich, and building growing structures large enough to house the necessary quantities would render the entire endeavor a net loss, monetarily speaking.”

“Oh, that can't be right,” the Doctor scoffed. When Braxli bristled, he quickly backtracked. “Well, I don't mean to imply that you don't know what you're talking about. Not at all. Certainly not. But it does seem at least marginally likely that you aren't in possession of all of the facts necessary to make an accurate assessment. For example, indoor growth is one option, certainly, but wouldn't it be simpler to perform some atmospheric modification, as well as a wee bit of genetic manipulation on the tree seeds? Plus, once you get a good-sized crop going, the trees themselves will begin to filter and further modify the environment. I suppose you lot tend to go into the fighting business rather more often than the genetic and environmental engineering business, but if you tried building alliances once in a while instead of doing all of the plundering and such, you could have all manner of friends willing to help you sort this out.”

Braxli grunted. “You and I obviously define 'simple' differently.”

“Weeeeeeell, yeah. But my way's right.” He winked, trying to coax something resembling good humor out of the Tauralim. He received a glare for his efforts and shrugged. “Seriously, though. I don't think you're considering how difficult it will be to transport massive quantities of timber across multiple galaxies. Never mind the fact that the humans are not going to just roll over and let you take their planet. I know, I know. Your instinct is going to be to see that as a challenge and want to prove me wrong as a point of pride. But I'm telling you. Negotiate with the people of this planet. Hell, I'd even bet you could get them to genetically modify the tree seeds for you. Ready to plant in a methane-rich atmosphere. What do you say?”

“Taurali do not negotiate. Even if we did, I do not have the authority to do anything beyond my mission, which was to determine the potential value of Earth's resources. I am to report back, and those of higher rank will decide the course of action.”

“That's aiming rather low, isn't it? Wouldn't you rather have a chance to distinguish yourself?”

“I think you had better resume your repair work before I change my mind about letting you live.” Braxli's clenched jaw was a pretty clear indicator that the Doctor had pressed him enough for the time being. He held up his hands in defeat.

“All right, all right. Cultural differences. Forget I said anything.”

He trained his sonic on another cracked gauge housing and got back to work.

* * *

Leading the group, Pete held up a hand to silently call for a halt as soon as the ship came into view. After briefly surveying the area, he motioned to a stand of trees above and ahead of them, and they began moving again in order to head for that cover. Even from a distance, they could see light shining from inside the ship. Pete breathed a sigh of relief; the light was a good sign. Having the electricity restored meant that the Doctor had to be making progress with the repairs. Making progress would surely keep him alive.

Under the trees, the Torchwood team set up their surveillance equipment. Jake and Pete were on scopes, one night-vision, one heat-seeking infrared. Mark settled himself behind a sniper rifle, on the off-chance they were able to take out the Taurali while ensuring the Doctor's safety. Better to set up and not use it than to try to initiate a firefight on the fly.

“I'm picking up three heat signatures inside the craft,” Jake reported quietly. Rose jumped when she heard his voice come over the radio. “One stationary near the rear. Appears to be horizontal, but too warm to be dead. Maybe sleeping. The other two are moving, but seated maybe? Hard to tell relative height, so I can't be certain, but I think I've got a fix on the Doctor.”

“He's the left of the two in front,” murmured Pete. “I've got a pretty clear view through the front window. He's alive, Rose. Looks to be working on some gauges or something in the cockpit.”

Rose breathed a sigh of relief. “That's brilliant. Do you have an approach?”

“Possibly,” Pete replied. “Doubtful we could get down there undetected while there's one up in the cockpit with him. We'll keep a watch on the situation, try to catch his attention when the alien with him isn't looking in our direction. If he can create a diversion and get the second alien to the rear of the ship for a while, it might give us enough time to sneak down there and make contact.”

“That's great. Keep me posted.”

Confirmed alive! Rose relaxed for the first time in over a day. She desperately hoped they would at least be able to get a comm on the Doctor. She would feel a whole lot better still, if she could actually hear his voice. But just having confirmation that he hadn't frozen to death or been killed by the Taurali was a huge relief.

Knowing she would be awakened immediately if any of her team tried to get in touch, and knowing that everyone else would be sleeping in shifts to be as rested as possible for the remainder of the operation, Rose finally felt comfortable enough to kick back in her chair and close her eyes for a bit of a kip.


	3. Chapter 3

There was a glint out of the Doctor's peripheral vision. He blinked and looked up and around. Braxli was facing the rear of the ship, completely absorbed with cleaning and calibrating his weapon, which he seemed to be doing more out of habit than necessity. The light flashed again in the corner of his eye, and he registered it as coming from through the windshield. He squinted out into the darkness. When it flashed a third time, he was able to pinpoint the location. Though he couldn't make out anything in the dark, he knew the only realistic source of any light on this remote Scottish mountain would be Torchwood. He suspected, given their technology and equipment, that they would be able to see him, even if he couldn't see them, so he waved. He glanced over his shoulder. Braxli was still oblivious. The light began to flash in rhythm, communicating via Morse code.

INJURED?

He shook his head.

EXTRACT?

He shook his head again. He felt like he was making progress with Braxli, possibly. Besides, he didn't much fancy a sprint through the snowy night while sleep deprived and trying to evade lasergun fire.

SUPPLY DROP?

He wondered how he might go about facilitating that. Shebli was still asleep, obviously, but he wasn't sure how to get Braxli out of the cockpit long enough for one of the team members to run down and back undetected. He cocked his head to the side to indicate uncertainty, then gave a slow nod to say that he would try. They would be watching, and presumably able to communicate with each other, so they should be able to call off any approach in progress if conditions became unfavorable.

WILL AWAIT.

He nodded again, simultaneously hoping and not hoping that Rose was out there in the darkness nearby. To have her close would be a comfort, but her ankle was certainly not stable enough for trekking through the snow. He did have to admit that it was nice to have backup, though he suspected that along with the scopes and lights and such, there was someone out there with a high-powered rifle, just waiting to take out the Taurali if the situation got out of hand. Or possibly even before it did. And as much as he did not agree with their motivations, the Doctor did not want to see the Taurali dead by Torchwood's hand, either. Besides, if there were some way to get them airborne again but also be able to track them, the information gained by having knowledge of the Taurali battle fleet location would be invaluable.

He cleared his throat. “Erm, Braxli, do you have any replacement fuses? I think your nav-comm system has a short circuit. Well, had a short circuit. I believe I've fixed it, but I need to put in a new fuse in order to check.”

Braxli grunted. “I am no mechanic. There may be fuses in the maintenance equipment boxes. I will have Shebli look when he awakens.”

“Come on, Braxli. I know we haven't known each other long, but I promise you I'm not an idiot. If I were going to try to give you the slip and leg it out of here, I would not do it in the middle of the night while it's pitch black and freezing cold. I don't know where I'm going. We're miles away from anything. I'd be dead of exposure by morning. And I don't know if you lot do the whole family thing, but I've got someone waiting for me at home to whom I'd very much like to get back. So do us both a favor and trust me enough to run and fetch the maintenance equipment boxes so I can get your nav-comm up and running, move on to the next thing, get you airborne, get me home. Can we do that, please?”

The tall alien hesitated. That he didn't refuse outright only served as encouragement.

“Tell you what. I'll sing a song. I'll keep singing. The ship's not so big that you won't be able to hear me, even if you can't see me. Come on, any requests? I can do a mean rendition of 'The Hunting Ballad of Raxacoricofallapatorious.'”

“Taurali do not enjoy singing. Fine. Continue your work. If you attempt to escape, I will follow your tracks through the snow and kill you on sight.”

“Reading you loud and clear, Braxli. I'll be right here when you get back.”

As soon as the alien had cleared the doorway, the Doctor flashed a thumbs-up out the window. Almost immediately, there was a cough from somewhere off to his right. The Doctor jumped. They must have managed to sneak up to the craft while he was keeping Braxli's attention from whatever was going on outside (not that he could see much out there anyway, with the lights on inside the ship, but still). Peering at the right side wall of the cockpit, he could just make out a little gap where the side window had been jarred out of its frame during the crash. He quickly walked over and leaned gently on the window, widening the gap somewhat without putting too much stress on the laminated glass. A gloved hand thrust a small bag through the hole. The Doctor grabbed the bag and murmured, “Ta.”

The Doctor quickly opened the bag. Inside were three small tracking devices, two high-calorie food bars, two chemical hand warmers, and a communications earpiece small enough to fit so deeply in his ear as to be undetectable by the Taurali. He shoved it into his ear, withdrew and unwrapped one of the food bars, and shoved the rest of the bag into his pocket. Right away he could hear Pete Tyler speaking.

“...see you're alive, Doctor. You seem to be making progress on the ship as well, which is good. Now listen. The model of in-ear comm we've given you is a receiver only. We were going for the smallest device possible. So you can hear us, but we can't hear you. However, the trackers are equipped with microphones. When it is safe to do so, you can install and activate one of them, perhaps concealed within the cockpit. There shouldn't be much risk of interference with the other instruments. They will also automatically deactivate and power down in the presence of transmitter detectors, so you should be at a minimal risk of being found out.”

“Tosh checked in about twenty minutes ago.” The Doctor's single heart soared at Rose's voice, then plummeted at the thought of her out in the cold and injured. “The updates to the tracking software are complete. As soon as the devices are activated, they should download the firmware patch automatically.”

“Excellent,” Pete said. “Okay, status reports. Mark and I are continuing to visually monitor the situation, and Jake will rejoin us shortly. Miranda?”

“All clear at base camp,” Miranda reported. “Ollie and I are staying as warm as we can and awaiting further instructions.”

“Very good,” Pete said. “Rose?”

“Standing by at the zeppelin. I also received a call from Beta Team. Progress on invasion contingency preparations is ongoing, but they are coordinating with UNIT and should have an official operational plan ready for final signatures by midday tomorrow.”

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief that Rose was safely aboard the zeppelin. Not that she couldn't handle herself just fine in the field, of course, but her ankle was far from being stable enough to hike across miles of snowy mountainside.

“Very good. Keep me updated on any major developments from that end.” Pete again. “Right. So Doctor, we will wait to hear from you until such time as it is safe for you to do so. In the event that the situation becomes too unstable and immediate extraction becomes a necessity, you can indicate this by showing three fingers out the front window. Good luck. Over and out.”

Hearing from the team buoyed the Doctor's spirits, and he could already feel his blood sugar climbing as a result of eating the survival rations. He dove back into his repairs with renewed enthusiasm. He estimated he had only another day's work ahead of him to get the craft spaceworthy again. He was stretched out under what was essentially the dash, access panel open and wires dangling out, when Braxli returned with two large storage tubs.

“These are the boxes containing replacement parts,” he said. “Any fuses on board should be in here.”

The Doctor poked his head out. “Brilliant! Let's have a look then, shall we?”

* * *

Pete, Jake and Mark, though dressed appropriately in survival suits, were not exactly comfortable during that long, cold night. They had brought along one sub-zero mummy bag and took turns sleeping in it for a few hours at a time, one asleep, two remaining on watch. Similarly, Ollie and Miranda alternated napping and listening to the comms. Rose stayed awake. She was receiving hourly updates from the team back at headquarters and also waiting on tenterhooks for the Doctor to activate one of the tracking devices. The more time passed, the more anxious she became, wanting to hear his voice, to hear for herself that he was faring all right.

Around 3am, there was a crackling over the comms, and the Doctor's voice filled her ear. Finally! Except...oh. He was speaking with the Taurali. In their language. Not for the first time (not by half) since originally getting stuck in the parallel world, she mourned the absence of the TARDIS's translation circuits. Torchwood had developed a device that could translate maybe half a dozen alien languages on the fly; sadly, Tauralish was not one of them.

But he sounded okay, and hearing him meant that he had managed to install at least one of the trackers. That was excellent progress, as well as being indicative that he probably wasn't in any immediate danger. She winced at the sudden whine of the sonic screwdriver over the radio, but she sat forward again and focused when she could just make out the Doctor speaking below it.

“Sorry for the buzz, trying to mask my voice. Any of you lot actually able to understand me?”

“Reading you loud and clear!” Rose exclaimed, then reconsidered her word choice. “Erm, well, actually neither of those. But I can hear you well enough.”

The sonic cut out, and he said a few more words in Tauralish. She could hear him talk back and forth with the aliens again for a bit, and then the sonic whirred again.

“Keeping it short. I've nearly sorted the ship's interior systems. Just a bit more work to do there, and tomorrow I'll try to fix the left side engine.” Silence again. 

“Copy that,” came Pete's voice, gravelly with sleep, over the comm. “We'll retreat out of sight before daybreak but will remain nearby. Now that we have an audio link, you can hail us vocally if the need arises.”

“Anything I need to let Beta Team know back at headquarters?” Rose interjected.

Sonic noise. “Plenty, but nothing urgent, and way more detail than I can go into at the moment. I should have more freedom to communicate tomorrow while I'm working outside on the engine.”

“Right. Stay safe. Be in touch when you can.” Rose hoped he would read between the lines of her professional tone to the true message underneath (“Please don't put yourself in danger. I miss you. I love you.”)

“Will do. Stay warm out there, you lot. And thanks for coming for me. It's really nice to have backup.” (“I love you too, and all of you are the very best, and this is a gazillion times better than being a lonely Lord of Time.”)

Rose sat back, pulling her feet up and hugging her knees. He was all right. He sounded in reasonably good spirits (difficult though it was to hear him clearly). She was flooded with relief. She listened, for a while, to the aliens talking in the background, the Doctor interjecting every now and again. She was comforted by the mere tone and cadence of his voice, even if she couldn't understand his words. Before too long, though, she could see the disadvantage of having an open mic broadcasting every single sound from inside the ship. The rest of the team could control whether or not they were transmitting. The tracker on the Taurali craft, however, was just providing a steady broadcast, the bulk of which was not even decipherable, let alone useful. Surveillance was all well and good, but there was no reason all six of them needed to be listening to every little thing. She waited for a lull in the background noise.

“Pete?” (She never called him “Dad” at work, even though she'd started doing so at home only a couple of months after Canary Wharf.)

“Yeah, go ahead, Rose.”

“Now that there's an active mic inside the ship, there's going to be a lot of non-critical chatter across the comms. I can call Tosh about having it transmit on a separate frequency, which I'll then follow from here. And then I can let you know if anything urgent arises. What do you think?”

“That's not a bad idea. Yes, okay. You go ahead and do that.”

“Copy.”

Rose dialed up poor Tosh, who had only gone to sleep in Torchwood's equivalent of a hospital on-call room a couple of hours previously. But it was quickly sorted, and soon enough she had the ship's audio to herself, playing quietly over the speaker in the zeppelin. She and the Doctor couldn't have a private conversation, exactly (since her side of things would still be audible to the rest of the team), but each took more than a small measure of comfort just knowing the other was there, listening.

* * *

Morning dawned. Rose, who preferred tea to coffee most days, made herself a kettle of strong coffee in the zeppelin's tiny galley, feeling more than a little bit guilty as she sat there and sipped, knowing the rest of her team was shivering in the snow and making do with caffeinated food bars.

The Doctor began work on the damaged engine as soon as there was light enough to see by, outside. He was exhausted, having now gone over 48 hours without sleep. He recalled a wager he and Rose had made, a day and change after he woke up in this part-human body of his; she'd bet him he couldn't last more than three days without sleep before collapsing involuntarily. He was beginning to think he wouldn't even make it that long. But he forged ahead, shaking the proverbial cobwebs from his mind and trying to focus on engine repairs.

He was able to plant a second tracking device within the engine's casing. He kept it deactivated for the most part, on account of the near-constant sonicking and hammering of metal, but every once in a while there were moments of quieter work, and so he was able to chat off and on to Rose. It helped keep him at least somewhat alert, even if she couldn't reasonably respond to every little thing he had to say. Mostly he kept her apprised of his progress, and she passed along the relevant bits to Pete and the rest of the team. He also told her what he'd learned about the Taurali, the information he'd managed to suss out as to their potential plans as well as the location of the battle fleet, which he'd read on the nav screen.

Around midday, he had her order everyone back to base camp. He was confident enough in his situation with the Taurali that it seemed silly to keep them crouching in the snow full-time. The engine would easily take the rest of the day, and then there would be startup tests and diagnostics to run overnight. At the very earliest, he wouldn't be ready for a pickup until about mid-morning the following day. Rose and Pete were both reluctant, but the Doctor assured them that he was close enough to finishing the repairs that the Taurali were confident of his usefulness, but he had deliberately left some things incomplete; for instance, he had fixed the navigational components of their nav-comm, but there were still a few “mysterious” problems with the communications equipment (he'd left a couple of critical wires unconnected, but the Taurali didn't need to know that). This way, he could more accurately dictate the time of his completion, as good as scheduling it, once he got the rest of his proverbial ducks in a row.

The only very delicate point would come at the end. It was entirely possible, though (he had begun to believe) not terribly likely, that the Taurali would simply kill him once he had outlived his usefulness. Shebli was still by no means his biggest fan, but he was reasonably confident that Braxli had enough respect for him, and for the help he had provided, to at least consider the option of letting him live. He'd been in closer scrapes before, of course, but all of those times he'd had the backup plan of simply regenerating, which obviously wasn't an option this time. Higher stakes called for more well-defined contingency plans. Fortunately, he had the Torchwood team to back him up. Toward late afternoon, Rose called Tosh and had her switch the trackers' frequency again so that the Doctor could coordinate with the team at the base camp.

Eventually they had a plan. It was maybe not the greatest plan, but given the circumstances, it would suffice. With that sorted, the Doctor now had a specific deadline to meet, and he redoubled his efforts to get the last of the engine components fixed and operational once more.

* * *

As the sun set, Jake, Pete and Mark set off from base camp again and arranged themselves in the same place they'd kept watch the previous night. Jake and Mark were both on rifles this time, with orders to stand down unless the Doctor was immediately threatened. He had spoken with Braxli in the afternoon and received the alien's word that he would not be harmed once he'd finished the work, but none of the team was quite willing to absolutely and unreservedly trust the word of a Tauralim. (Not even the Doctor, truth be told.)

As night fell more fully, the Doctor was just beginning the diagnostic checks but had managed to get both engines running and 95% of the on-board systems functional. He had put a lock on the short-range weapons; it was part of his agreement with Braxli that they would automatically unlock once the ship was out of Earth's atmosphere and clear of firing range. He was also waiting until the last possible minute to fully reconnect the communications system. Braxli had agreed to allow the Doctor to use it to call for a ride home once they were minutes from departure, but the Doctor didn't want to give the Taurali any means of contacting their own fleet before then. He created static across all of the channels by means of simple electrical interference in the wiring under the console. It was sufficiently localized to cause problems only for the comm system and not any of the other instruments. The Taurali did not give any indication that they thought the Doctor had done anything untoward, seeming impatient but not suspicious while he fussed with the wiring and hemmed and hawed. The diagnostic scans continued to run, and system after system checked out clean and came online. 

“Won't be long now, fellows,” the Doctor said around the sonic, which he held in his mouth while he twisted together another two wires. “Just got to...”

He turned the speaker back on and scanned through the frequency range.

“Ah! See? Getting there. I've cleared it up for the short-range frequencies. Just need to sort out your long-range communication and you'll be as good as airborne.”

Meanwhile, Ollie and Miranda began packing up the base camp and would be waiting with two of the three snowmobiles ready to go. As soon as the Taurali craft lifted off, they would ride over to collect the Doctor and the rest of the team. It wouldn't take more than about seven or eight minutes to reach them. Rose was readying the zeppelin for departure. Despite the late hour and the general sleep deprivation all around, everyone was tensely alert as the time for the Doctor's extraction grew nearer.

The Doctor finally did away with the last of the comm system interference just as the sky over the mountain began to lighten. Once Braxli confirmed for himself that he could contact the battle fleet, he allowed the Doctor to hail Torchwood HQ to request a lift home. They of course were already expecting his call, as he'd been able to let Rose know of the plans via the microphone in the tracker, so they played along but kept it brief. With that done, there was nothing left but to release the ship's ground lock, which he would do from the outside, with his sonic. Shebli followed the Doctor out of the craft, warily supervising, even though the Doctor had rolled his eyes and asked if they really thought he was in any state to leg it on foot and leave them with a land-locked but otherwise fully functional ship.

Everything was proceeding according to plan, and the Doctor could practically feel Rose's arms around him once again. His sonic whirred, and the ship's engines roared to full capacity. Shebli nodded grudgingly and turned to climb back aboard the ship. The Doctor gave a wave to both Taurali and began to walk away, feeling both tremendous relief and satisfaction at a job well done.

And that's when Shebli spun around and threw the knife he had concealed in his waistband. 

The Doctor heard the shot of the Torchwood rifle, whirled around to look, and felt the searing pain in his chest almost simultaneously. Mark's shot had been taken without hesitation the moment Shebli started to raise his arm. Shebli was dead before he hit the ground, but he still managed to let the knife fly. His throw was diverted, luckily, but the Doctor looked down to see the double-pointed blade stuck into his parka just beneath his right clavicle.

Everything was a blur after that. He could hear the ship lift off and fly away, Braxli evidently more concerned with getting out than avenging the death of a partner he hadn't particularly liked all that much to begin with. He could see, vaguely, the Torchwood team rushing toward him, could hear Rose's voice yelling over the comms, demanding to know what had happened, begging him to hold on.

Then the world shifted sideways as he collapsed onto the snow, and everything faded to black.

* * *

It was touch and go for a bit. All things considered, a lasergun wound might have been better, as the shot would at least have been self-cauterizing. Instead, the knife had nicked the subclavian vein and cut a bunch of smaller vessels; it was jarred loose when the Doctor fell, and once it was no longer blocking the wound, an alarming amount of blood began to pour out. The puddle in the snow grew larger as Pete and Jake worked frantically to staunch the flow. Ollie and Miranda were racing toward them with proper medical supplies, but they were still a good six minutes away.

Rose was a wreck. After all that, they had been so close to getting him out safely, and now he was bleeding out in the snow eight miles away. She tried to focus on the fact that Ollie and Miranda were both trained battlefield medics, and that they had specialized equipment in the Torchwood med bag. As long as the wound wasn't too grievous, they should be able to stabilize him. Still, she listened in horror to the grunts and curses being uttered by the team as they tried to get control of the situation. 

“We've got the bleeding staunched,” Pete finally said, panting. “I think it's missed the artery. He's unconscious, but he's breathing and has a pulse.”

“We're two minutes out!” Miranda shouted over the roar of the snowmobiles. “Keep him as warm as you can to avoid shock. Put him on top of the mummy bag to get a layer between him and the snow!”

Mark ran back to where they had ditched their equipment the moment the Doctor fell. He grabbed the sleeping bag and brought it back over, spreading it out on the ground. The three men carefully lifted the Doctor on top of it just as Ollie and Miranda came racing into view. They stripped off their own parkas and covered his legs and abdomen, trying to keep him as warm as possible. Pete kept a careful eye on the slow rise and fall of the Doctor's chest as the medics went to work.

Sprain or no sprain, Rose paced. She bit her thumbnail and listened to everything unfolding. It took the better part of forty minutes, but with a rapid plasma infusion and some rather dicey field surgery, the Doctor eventually regained consciousness. He reached out to Pete, who wordlessly handed over his comm.

“Rose? Think I'd like to go home now.”

His voice was weak, but it was the best thing she'd heard in hours.

“Oh thank god!” she said, relieved beyond measure. “Thank god you're all right.”

“Can't get rid of me,” he chuckled, then winced. “See you soon, yeah?”

“He should be stable for travel now,” Ollie interjected. “Really lucky the knife missed both the artery and the lung. It could've been a hell of a lot worse. Let's get up and out of the cold.”

They zipped their gear into the mummy bag and left it near Shebli's body. There wasn't room for everything on the snowmobiles, but they would stop by with the zeppelin in order to fetch everything on their way back to London. The Doctor clung to Ollie's waist with his left arm, his right held tightly to his body with a sling immobilized so he wouldn't aggravate his injury every time he moved. Jake perched behind him, while Pete and Mark rode with Miranda. It was not as rapid a trip back to base camp as their flight from it, what with both snowmobiles overloaded and the Doctor quite weak, but they eventually made it. Jake and Pete transferred to the third snowmobile, and the rest of the trip back to the zeppelin went a bit faster.

Rose heard them coming before she saw them. She leapt up from her seat and limped out of the zeppelin and through the snow to meet them. Before the Doctor could even get up off the snowmobile, she threw her arms around him, careful to avoid his injured shoulder, and held him for a long moment.

“Don't you ever scare me like that again, you git,” she whispered into his ear. 

He chuckled, wearily. “Lovely to see you, too.”

While the team loaded the snowmobiles and gear into the zeppelin, Rose and the Doctor walked slowly through the snow, hands clasped together tightly, and climbed aboard.

The Doctor sank, boneless, into his seat. He laid his head on Rose's shoulder the moment she sat beside him, murmured, “Made it three days,” and was asleep before they even lifted off the ground.


	4. Chapter 4

Once the team had retrieved the abandoned gear and Shebli's body, Mark got them aloft for the float back to London. Jake sat up front to keep him company and help him stay awake, even though the zeppelin could more or less fly itself. Pete sat in the back of the cabin, first on the phone with headquarters and then with Jackie, giving status updates. Once they finished a preliminary inventory on their field kit, Ollie started in on the chart paperwork, and Miranda sat down beside Rose.

“How's he doing?”

Rose shrugged the shoulder not occupied by a lightly-snoring part-Time Lord. “Been out cold for almost an hour. Pulse is strong, though. I can't thank you and Ollie enough for what you did out there.”

Miranda smiled at her. “Just did our jobs. Was a lot of luck to thank, as well. If that knife had gone in a few centimeters higher or lower, or if he hadn't been wearing his parka, or if Mark hadn't taken the shot when he did...”

She trailed off, waving her hand forward. Rose had already spent enough time imagining worst case scenarios; she didn't especially want to revisit all of that anxiety. She squeezed the Doctor's thigh, reassuring herself that he was there and safe and would be all right. She leaned her cheek against the top of his head, and he made a little snuffling noise in his sleep.

“Anyway,” Miranda continued, “I'm glad it's all over. Can't wait to get home and have a long, hot shower.”

“Bet you could sleep for about a week as well,” Rose said. “I know I could.”

Miranda chuckled. “Ollie and I didn't have it quite as bad as the rest of you. We didn't really have anything to do at the base camp, so we mostly just took turns sleeping and staying on watch. And certainly none of us had it as bad as he did.” She nodded toward the Doctor. “It's amazing what a person can do if there's no alternative. And not just staying awake, but being able to function enough to fix everything that was wrong with that ship!“

“Amazing's the right word, yeah.” Rose smiled warmly. 

“Well, if I can just take his vitals and have a quick look at the suture site, I'll leave you two alone,” Miranda said. “Ollie'll be wanting a hand with the paperwork.”

“Of course. Whatever you need to do. I reckon he'd sleep through, well, basically anything right now.”

His shirts gapped where Jake had cut them in order to get at the knife wound and staunch the bleeding, and as soon as the bandage was pulled back, Rose looked at the surprisingly neat sutures Miranda had managed, despite the freezing temperature and numb fingers, to put in. 

“You really did a brilliant job with the sutures,” she said. “I don't know how you managed, with the cold and all.”

“I knew all those years of training would come in handy some day! But also, it was a damn good job we had two medics out on this rescue. Ollie and I were able to swap, a couple of times at least, so one or the other of us could warm our hands back up. Probably wouldn't have looked so pretty in the end, otherwise.”

Miranda had a listen to his breathing and checked his vitals. As predicted, the Doctor slept through the whole thing. As soon as she pronounced him to be in fine condition, Miranda went back over to help her partner with the paperwork. Rose rested against the Doctor's head and finally let herself relax.

* * *

Four and a half hours was not anything like enough sleep. Not even in the general vicinity of enough, really, not after everything he'd been through. But they were the last ones aboard the zeppelin, and Rose couldn't exactly pick him up and carry him out like a toddler who'd fallen asleep in the car, so she reluctantly tried to gently wake him.

“Doctor?”

No response.

She patted his leg with her right hand, twisting slightly and reaching up with her left to stroke his cheek. “Sorry to have to do this, but we've landed. Time to get up so we can go home, yeah? Nice hot shower, check on the TARDIS, sleep for ages in our own bed. C'mon, Doctor.”

“Mrrrrf,” he groaned against her shoulder, turning his head as he sat up slowly. He sucked in a breath as he registered both the stiffness in his neck and the pain in his shoulder. 

“Yeah, the meds are wearing off, no doubt,” Rose said, brow furrowed sympathetically. “We'll get you set up with some more. You think you can stand up?”

“Give me a minute.”

He yawned, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand. He slowly stretched his neck and back before accepting Rose's outstretched hand and letting her pull him up. He felt like he'd been run over by a train, which was rubbish, because he'd only stayed awake for a few days and been stabbed and then slept for several hours in what was really just a mildly uncomfortable position. In the grand scheme of things, he'd been through much, much worse. Not for the first time, he bemoaned the loss of his Time Lord resilience. Not that he would ever, ever give up his chance at a life with Rose, but would it have been so terrible if he'd retained just a little bit of his rapid healing abilities after the metacrisis?

“Bloody fragile human body,” he grumbled.

“Oi,” Rose chided, rubbing his arm. “You'll feel better after you've slept more. C'mon. Let's get you home.”

* * *

After Rose finally got the Doctor into bed in their flat, he slept for fourteen hours straight. When he finally emerged, staggering and bleary-eyed around mid-morning, she had tea and banana pancakes waiting for him in the kitchen. 

“Hey there, sleepyhead,” she said with a smile, standing up from the table to fetch the food she was keeping warm in the oven. “How're you feeling?”

He sat heavily at the table, then winced. He rubbed his eyes and scrubbed at his hair, causing it to stick up even more wildly than it already was.

“I think I owe you a tenner,” he said. “Three days with no sleep...yeah, I'm fairly certain I never want to do that again, if I can help it.”

She set his breakfast down on the table in front of him and ran her fingers through his hair, attempting futilely to tame it at least a little. He sighed and leaned into the contact before picking up his fork and tucking into the pancakes. He gave a little moan after the first bite.

“These just might be the finest banana pancakes I've ever eaten. And I don't just mean this me, Rose, I mean ever. These are amazing.”

She smiled at him and returned to her own seat. “Almost certainly a side effect of not really eating anything for a few days. Honestly, they're no different to how I always make them. But I'm glad you're enjoying them.”

They sat in relative quiet for a while, the Doctor hungrily eating his breakfast, Rose sitting back with her tea, regarding him. It was such a relief to have him home and safe. He perked up more with every bite. By the time the plate was empty, he looked much more himself.

“Better?”

He grinned at her. “Very much improved, yes. So! What did I miss while I was sleeping like a tranquilized krayorg?”

“Actually, Tosh called about three hours ago. They've recorded some transmissions between the Tauralim...what'd you call him, Braxdi?”

“Braxli.”

“Braxli, right.” Rose nodded. “Anyway, he got in touch with his battle fleet, and we've got a recording of their conversation. The team would like you to translate as soon as you're up to it.”

“Won't be a problem. I can do that now, if they'll send you the audio file.”

She reached over for her laptop. “Already done. Want to have a listen?”

The Doctor nodded, and she pulled up the file for him. His brow furrowed in concentration as the conversation began to play, and his face broke into a broad grin after about fifteen seconds.

“Good news, then?” Rose asked.

“Oh, it's brilliant! Wait, hold on.” He held up a finger, focusing on the reply from the Taurali battle fleet. Rose stayed quiet until the recording had finished, letting him listen without interruption. She looked at him expectantly as soon as it stopped playing.

“Our Braxli had a change of heart, it seems,” the Doctor said, beaming. “He told his superiors that the Earth was an overcrowded wasteland, barren of any valuable resources, much too far afield to bother with. And when they challenged him on his claim, he told them about Shebli's untimely demise and may have slightly exaggerated the might and ferocity of the human race. Granted, this may come back to haunt us later, but for the time being, the Taurali are classifying the Earth as unobtainable and humans as a foe to be wary of.”

“And you think he really means it? Isn't just having us on because he found the tracker or something?”

He thought a moment. “Well, I suppose it's possible. But no, it sounded genuine, and I don't think Braxli's that good an actor.”

“Oh, that's fantastic!” She matched him, grin for grin. “Blimey, what a relief. If you can type up a full transcript, I'll send that back to the team, and we should be able to take the rest of the day off.”

“Obviously we should continue to monitor any and all transmissions, but I agree, this is definitely promising. And a day off sounds marvelous! Pity we don't have a working dermal regenerator yet. I feel loads better, but my shoulder's still quite sore. Be nice if we could really make good use of the day.”

He waggled his eyebrows at Rose, who giggled. “Oh, I reckon we're creative enough to come up with something to do that won't hurt your shoulder.” She poked her tongue between her teeth, and he made a happy murmur at the back of his throat. “But first, transcript.”

Rose pushed her laptop over so he could play the file again and translate the exchange. She got up to clear away the dishes and then returned to stand behind him, rubbing his back and shoulders gently, careful to avoid his injury. He stopped typing a moment and dropped his head forward with a sigh, eyes closed, going back to work when she stopped rubbing and prodded him instead. Reading over his shoulder, Rose was relieved anew that Torchwood's invasion contingency plans would probably not have to be put into use after all. Not for the Taurali, at least.

“Well, whatever you said to him out there must've worked,” she mused, once he had finished. 

“Honestly I'm surprised it did.” He tipped his head back and looked up at her. “At the time, Braxli didn't seem all that persuaded by anything I had to say to him. I really couldn't tell you what changed his mind.” 

She ran her fingers through his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. “Well, whatever the reason, I'm glad he did. And I'm more than happy to give you all of the credit. You were brilliant up there.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off. “Yeah, I know, you're always brilliant. And no, I never doubted you. Just, y'know, seems worth saying. That I'm proud of you, yeah? Scared the hell out of me, there at the end, but I'm still proud of what you did.”

That simple expression of sentiment, from the person who mattered most to him in the whole universe, was enough to kill the flippant response waiting in his throat. The man with the unstoppable gob, rendered speechless. He turned sideways in his chair, reaching out with his left arm to grab her by the waist and pull her around to sit across his lap. As soon as she did, he ducked his head forward to softly capture her lips with his own. Rose sighed into the kiss, bringing one hand up to rest over his heart, the other gently caressing the nape of his neck. He held her lightly around the hips, deepening the kiss as she opened to him. Going forward, there was of course no guarantee they wouldn't be separated again, despite their best efforts to avoid it, but he would always fight to get back to her, back to this. He tried to tell her as much, using his lips and tongue but not to form words.

Somehow she still got the message, loud and clear.


End file.
